


Hostages and Coffee

by Sreya



Series: The Girl from the Coffee Shop [1]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Gen, Prompt Fic, alternate beginning, alternative universe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-16
Updated: 2015-02-16
Packaged: 2018-03-13 08:18:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,609
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3374384
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sreya/pseuds/Sreya
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>au: "i just committed a crime and i need to use you as a hostage i am so sorry"</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hostages and Coffee

**Author's Note:**

> Saw this prompt on somebody's blog and had this pop into my head. Probably doesn't fit EXACTLY, but since my muse handed it to me mostly fully-formed, I figured what the heck.

“Asgardian energy signal has stopped moving. Sending location coordinates to you now.”

“Copy.” Grant Ward glanced down to the panel between the handlebars of his motorcycle and took in the change of directions, then veered around the corner between traffic. He hated Los Angeles traffic - even mid-afternoon in the business district, it was still hellacious. But this was where the target was. And his team was tasked with tracking down the Norse/Asgardian artifacts that had started disappearing from museums after the “spectacular” appearance of Thor and Loki in New York last month. Lucky for them, they’d discovered the actual Asgardian pieces would emit a specific energy signature once activated, making it much easier to track them down.

Unluckily, they had to wait for them to be activated to use the energy signature. And it wasn’t enough to give them a pinpoint location, making missions like this in urban centers more difficult. Ward slowed the bike as he approached the target, and grimaced when he identified it. “Target located, it’s inside a Starbucks on South Citrus Boulevard.”

“Copy that, Ward. We believe the target chose this area to make a sale. Orders are to enter and observe, wait for the buyer to show up.”

“Yes, sir.” Ward parked the bike and pulled off his helmet, looking around to see if anyone appeared remotely suspicious. But it was the usual crowd of business men and women carrying their iced coffees back to the office or hunting down a cab to take them to their next meeting. Entering the shop, he took a quick look around. There were a dozen people in line at the counter, another 5 waiting at the other end for their orders. No one struck him as immediately suspicious, and Ward stepped into line with the waiting customers. He was glad he’d worn a button-down shirt over his jeans - wasn’t exactly business attire, but it was a little better for fitting in than a plain t-shirt.

By the time he arrived at the counter, 7 of the people in the shop had left and 4 more entered. Ward watched the newcomers to see if they expressed interest in anyone already there, but they were all focused on their own phones. He put in an order for an iced coffee and bran muffin, then positioned himself to watch the others as he waited. He saw the young woman who’d been parked in the armchair since he entered look up, brush aside her dark hair and slowly scan the room before turning back to her phone. His order was called out, and he took the coffee to a small table. He pulled out his phone and a dummy bluetooth ear piece. “Any change?”

“Negative, stay in position.”

Sighing, Ward settled in to pretend to play around on his phone. Well, as long as he was stuck here, he might be able to get in a couple rounds of _Angry Birds._  

* * *

By 16:00, the shop was mostly emptied out. The brunette had regularly checked out the other customers, and Ward was watching her pretty carefully. She didn’t look the type to be dealing in black market alien artifacts - dressed in jeans with holes, a black t-shirt with purple 1s and 0s making a heart shape and a flannel shirt over top, and earrings that dangled down to her shoulders. Two of the original three people at the computer bar were still there, one of them on his third coffee. One person who’d come in after Ward was still there, but everyone else had come and gone. One of the employees was wiping down the empty tables while the other was refilling the bakery display for the evening rush. Ward tensed when the brunette stood up, but she just walked toward the back to the restrooms and he settled back into his seat. If someone didn’t do something soon, he was going to -

“Ward, we’re getting an energy spike from the artifact at your location.”

“Copy,” he bit out. He pushed his chair back and started to stand up -

And a table nearby glowed a bright orange before exploding. He ducked down instinctively and braced for shrapnel to hit him, but only felt a light tickling as sparks showered down on him. Looking up, he saw the brunette standing near the door to the restroom, her arm outstretched with a gold circlet around her wrist. “Nobody move!” she shouted.

_Crap_.

* * *

The woman was efficient - she quickly had them put all their phones on one table, along with Ward’s gun that she’d spotted tucked under his shirt in the back, and zapped them into oblivion. She told one of the employees to draw down the shades over the windows and put up the “CLOSED” sign, but specifically told him to leave the door unlocked and uncovered. Then she had everyone sit against the back wall. “Don’t worry,” she told them, “this shouldn’t take too long.” She paced for a while, angling so she could look out the door without being clearly visible herself.

Ward had his support team babbling in his ear for a while, telling him to stand down in order to prevent any harm coming to the hostages. He growled a bit under his breath but couldn’t contradict them without giving away that he hadn’t been talking into his bluetooth piece before. The customers beside him, two men and a woman, were watching everything with wide eyes and bloodless faces. The younger of the employees, a girl around 20, was whimpering and had curled herself up into a ball, rocking back and forth. The other employee tapped out nervous beat on his knee, eyes darting around everywhere. Ward just sighed and leaned his head back. Just great.

* * *

“Where _are_ they?” the woman muttered, tossing her hair back over her shoulder and checking a watch. “They should be here by now.” Grimacing, she stuck her free hand into a pocket and pulled out a credit card, then tossed it to the older employee. “Here, fix up a round of coffees for everybody.” He blinked at her in surprise, mouth hanging open. “Hello, sprechen de English? Fix ‘em up!” The guy scrambled to his feet and darted around to the other side of the counter, pulling out cups and asking everyone what they wanted.

Ward looked carefully again at the woman. She seemed anxious, but not jittery or overly eager to use the circlet again. Taking a chance, he asked her, “Aren’t you afraid they’ll identify you with the credit card?”

She grinned at him. “Who said it’s my credit card?” She pulled out a chair and sat down, though still faced them with a clear angle to fire the Asgardian weapon if necessary. “Not that they could find anything on me anyway.”

“And why’s that?” Ward prompted. Maybe if he got her comfortable, chatty, she’d ease up and he’d find an opening.

“I wiped out everything on me a couple of years ago. Not that there was much to start with.” Her smile dimmed a little bit. “Doesn’t really matter anyway. I started over - gave myself a new life, a new name I liked better.”

He didn’t know what to say to that, so fell silent. The employee started passing out drinks, all super-venti-grande-whatever large sizes. The woman next to Ward gulped at her drink, then set it down; one of the men sipped slowly at his, the other just held it in a daze. He saw their captor give them all a glance, and then she sighed. “Sorry, everybody, I really didn’t expect things to take this long.”

“What were you expecting?” Ward asked.

She shook her head a bit. “Well, at the very least there should have been a call from a hostage negotiator. Though it wasn’t really the LA police I was expecting.”

Ward just raised an eyebrow, prompting her to go on. (He’d learned a long time ago most people will keep talking if he kept his own mouth shut.)

“Look, um, you can probably tell this isn’t your normal weapon for taking hostages.”

It took every ounce of willpower that Ward had to keep his eyes from rolling.

“I got this to get a certain group’s attention. I mean, you know that agency that showed up after New York and the Avengers and everything?” Starting to get a better picture, Ward slowly nodded. “Well, they have something that I need - I found this redacted file when I was trying to find my parents, and they’re the ones who redacted it. So,” she shrugged, “I figured if I could get into their headquarters or something, I might be able to find the original. And this is the only way I could think to get in - do something crazy, get arrested and brought in.” She half-smiled. “Crazy, huh? I go through all this, and they don’t even show up.”

For the tiniest of moments, Ward is speechless. Of all the dumb, crazy, idiotic… “Well…” he starts slowly, reaching toward her as though to pat her knee in consolation. “maybe they’re closer than you think.”

Before she can respond, he launches forward and yanks her arm up, pointing the circlet toward the ceiling in case she fires. A quick twist and turn, and he’s got the circlet off and slips it into the containment back he’d had in a pocket. The woman is sprawled on the floor next to him, holding her wrist in surprise. Ward smirks, and puts a hand out to help her up.

“Grant Ward, Agent of SHIELD. And you’re under arrest.”

She flops her mouth open a couple of times, speechless, until, “Oh, _shit_.”

**Author's Note:**

> Feel free to leave prompts in the comments!


End file.
